What did the state-commissioned “RevMax” study find?

Part 3 of Shocking things about Arizona CPS!   (Part 2:  Will a new administration stop the carnage of families?)

Arizona learned that it would benefit financially from ending services that help families stay in homes, and to increase foster-care. Naturally, the state promptly took this advice and steadily began INCREASING the number of children taken from their parents and put into foster care. According to the article, an attorney general audit reported, “The Department is working to increase federal revenues and has engaged a consultant to implement three projects involving federal grants used to fund Child Protective Services operations.  These projects are designed to replace state funds with increased federal revenues and are expected to bring in approximately $3 million in one-time revenues and $1.3 million annually in ongoing new revenues …”

Newly appointed CPS director Greg McKay, a former police detective then overseeing criminal investigations at CPS, sounded the alarm in 2013, that 6,000 reports called into a child abuse hotline had not been investigated.  The problem was many of these reports were not ignored but were vetted by Hotline responders prior to sending CPS agents.  As the results of these now, years later investigations netted out, very many of these calls were not legitimate.  Of the thousands of reports called in every day, some are doctors proactively avoiding malpractice lawsuits, couples involved in domestic or custody disputes, or neighbors with grudges.  Since RevMax had inspired Arizona to eliminate all services, the first and only call of duty for social workers had long since become “take the child”, so vetting these calls at the hotline stage was the only line of defense for many innocent families who were falsely reported on, but who would assume that a visit by DCS almost inevitably had become the beginning and end of these families.

To make matters worse, the government also began offering incentives to increase adoption rates from 2008-2012.  Not missing a beat, Arizona ranks behind only Texas in gaining the largest increase in adoptions.  So while McKay may have sounded an alarm to cause an uproar to cause the department to be overhauled in 2013, and send CPS agents to every family, he was likely unaware of the lethal brew from a state that does not have any programs or incentives to help children in their own homes.

This may be where McKay’s law enforcement background makes all the difference, and proper vetting and investigations will trump taking in children for no cause, or probable cause.   It will also, hopefully, lead to the investigation of the widespread and unethical practices that go on within the agency where evidence and facts are manipulated to achieve the goal of DCS never being wrong when removing children from their home.  As the chart above shows, (http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/cm2013.pdf  p. 119), Arizona is the ONLY state that uses probable cause, the lowest burden of proof, to remove children from their families.  This is exactly when thorough and proper investigation can save families from the destruction they are currently subjected to!

Republican Rep. Kate Brophy McGee:  “It’s an honor to let you all know that the Morrison Institute of Public Policy has invited me to join the Institute’s Advisory Board.  The Morrison Institute is a statewide leader examining critical issues for Arizona and the region.  I am very much looking forward to working with the Institute to advance evidence-based public policy in Arizona and regionally.”

Two common-sense bills to keep kids safe:  “The Department of Child Safety needs more information and transparency. These bills would offer both.”

Social workers in the state have been taught to take children first, ask questions later.  Judges in the state have been trained on camera to cite neglect first, ask questions later.  All along the way, draconian and evil practices are controlling the narrative where the truth and evidence would otherwise send or keep these families together.  Next, parents and children are silenced, gag-ordered, and not permitted evidence in their courtroom for thousands of families. We hear these stories first-hand all too often, even when it’s all over and the families did not break their gag-order, and lost their children.  This is where we believe McKay can make all the difference and stop the horrors Arizona children and families are living.

The situation we have today is an agency set up to fail without in-home and preventative services that work in other states where programs truly support “family values”.  These programs include the health and wellness of the family unit. From other U.S. states we have studied, one (not Arizona) uses their HHS Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funding, including IV-E funding, dollars to support parenting classes run by city agencies and by nonprofits, K-12 after school programs, and paid career internships for high school students at risk.  Another state uses ACF funding for Differential Response to support children and youth after school and summer programs, and a Parent Leadership Council in a poverty-stricken city.  Protective services are designed to support both parents and families, with the goal being reunification.  (This is NOT happening in Arizona where reunification plans are no more than words on paper).

One city even has a “Family Reunification Center” as a public-private partnership with one goal: working as a whole community to keep families together. Certainly these do not bring the highest “return on investment” in immediate dollars in the state coffer, but they strengthen families and communities in order to create healthier lives, and in the long run save billions with strengthened families in tact, and not damaged by generations of dysfunction by placing tens of thousands in a failed system.

If Arizona does not want government spending used on “programs” to help families succeed, they should reject federal funds entirely on moral and ethical grounds. Preventative and in-home services are as important as foster care and adoption.  Taking children from their families is supposed to be a last resort; ending parental rights should be the very last option, and rare – – – NOT the go to response as can be proved in so many cases in Arizona!  Arizona has created a cynical system that churns children into foster care (maximizes IV-E funds) and adoptions (maximizes an adoption incentive), and nothing could be more obscene as a government function.

This article from Lifting the Veil illustrates how Arizona’s love of money has become a root that has yielded great evil.  A dollar price has been placed on the heads of our children, and this cannot stand!  Fortunately, at the same time, more and more people are becoming aware of the longstanding carnage of families implemented to make CPS profitable over protective of children, a new administration.  The government we elect and pay for with our taxes no longer has permission to buy and sell our children, and the history of CPS in Arizona is critical to the understanding of how we got here, so we can turn it back, and stop being doomed to repeat it.

Our children belong to us, not the state.  If the state wishes to use federal funds to help children and families succeed, all the better.  But our children are not for sale, and ALL children belong under the protective umbrella of loving parents – NOT THE STATE.

A Miracle for Two Sisters

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